To the workers in the Bell Street office

One: Milk cannot be recycled. Nice try, you are all disgusting.

Two: The cupboard is not a kissing booth. Please don't, just don't.

It was gay day today. George square just packed fulla pride. Lot of scary-looking lesbians. Every one I've ever met has had huge breasts, it's intimidating.

On a completely unrelated, I swear, note I saw the most beautiful girl. Asian with fantastic flicky hair and great jeans and I very nearly fell over I was staring so much which would have been bad as I was crossing the street. She just had a look about her that made me want to know her.

On another unrelated note I shopped too much. Must stop that. Soon.

My little sister's eyes so wide

A website glitched and refused to work for me. So I emailed them and they offered me an alternative and then I gave them something I wrote that was sent back to me because she'd given me the wrong email. So I grit my teeth and sent another email and got the right one and gave them something I wrote. Guys this is huge for me. Huge! Half the reason I don't do things is because I'm incapable of writing formalities about myself. I can psyche myself up enough to send things off, hand in cvs, fill out application forms, enter competitions but jesus a handful of words saying here it is, here I am, hope to hear from you. I just can't.

So yeah, go me. Now all I have to do is win.

I was watching the news just there. They were talking to some woman about McCain and dear god. Everything she said was a perfected speech. She was aggressive and defensive and it wasn't for the fact that it was a woman asking her the questions I would have despaired of my gender completely. She was this blonde, stretched, caked thing. Older than she wished she looked. Oh, it was bad.

In other news Julie stayed home sick today and played GTA in the way only she can. I have not seen such spectacular spins of flaming vehicles and the cries of oh crap! why did I get back in? The defining moment was when she tried to steal a Mafia car. She got punched, shot in the head and when she casually sauntered away three burning cars hemmed her in and crushed her polygon head before everything exploded and she was informed she had been wasted.

"Why did they do that?" My little girl wailed. "What did I do to them?" Then she shot a policeman and battered a whore, complaining that she didn't have much money for a prostitute.

My brain and tongue just met and they ain't friends just yet

Ok so I watched The Simpsons Movie (bad but I guess not terrible) and I watched The Wicker Man (which could have been called Nicholas Cage Punches Some Women) and I also watched Back to the Future (I forgot they swore quite so much, I was surprised and amused). But forget all them.

I recorded a film called Love Me if You Dare because it had Marion Cotillard in it and I now know who she is since I watched La Vie en Rose (and she's in Big Fish! I did not know this). It wasn't until the french title told me it was called Jeux d'enfants that I realised I had heard of this film before. Two kids start playing a game of dares that carries on as they grow up getting more and more dangerous is basically what Sky told me. Pah! It gave no indication about what the film was like. This was one of the most ridiculous, silly and ultimately pointless love stories I have watched in a while and I adored it. It was like if Amelie had a really mean streak and I do hate comparing every French film to Amelie but colour wise and silliness wise I'm going to do it anyway. Completely different message and the ending was almost ruined. It was so perfect and then there was another scene and I was like nooooooooooooooo but then it was ok. If I interpreted it right, then it was good.

So in conclusion I am very much in love with this movie. It may be that it's because he looks like a guy I fell in love with for awhile this year but I'd like to think it was more because the film was good.

Spill it out on the ragged floor

I sometimes feel that I project myself onto others too much. Like I'm slowly gathering a group of people to reflect my own personality. Collecting familiar traits. I can pick and choose and avoid the parts of me I hate. Mostly. I thought this a lot more eloquently than I'm writing it.

I'm watching another french thriller. This time about a page turner plotting revenge against a pianist who dashed her hopes of brilliant piano playing as a child. At least that's what the information button tells me. So far it's been a lot of weird looks from the girl who played the mother in L'Enfant (and who is rather good) and I think she's trying to injure the pianist's son subtley through difficult piano playing and she just kissed the pianist and made things awkward. The pianist is a woman. I think I just missed some sort of lesbian connection just now by typing. I'm really only watching because the pianist looks like an older version of an old friend of mine. Seriously I think the French can make a thriller from anything. I've watched lemmings, children and piano players. Interesting mix. I'm just not sure where the revenge is coming in. Unless it's I will destroy you by loving you! Maybe I should pay more attention.

Oh holy crap awesome bit!

This cello player put the moves on revenge girl. He handed her his cello and then just launched some sort of awkward boobattack from behind. Her face didn't change but her hand moved up the neck of the cello and I was like no that's terrible phallic imagery, terrible! But then she slammed the spike on the bottom of the cello onto his foot and he is in hospital. The music implies that more revenge is to come. I think she's now trying to drown the son. And I think I just saw her breasts. This is why you should close the curtains in changing rooms properly. She's like some sort of evil lesbian, I love it.

Je me souviendrais de mon petit ami

My dad just called from Paris. He's there filming for a day and called to make me jealous.

"I can save you some money. I'll take notes for your research instead. Not like there's any other reason to go." I shrugged off his taunts and he sighed. No fun if I don't get wound up.

Apparently it's sunny and the woman in the background sounded like she was shouting about her cat.

Bring me back a fat notebook of grey rain, writers hideouts, sweeping skylines and a kiss of Autumn boatrides. I miss my French lecture hall. I realised that last year. I miss the freezing room that smelt of gas as I sat there so very lost with all those grammar points I never learnt squeezed in snug with the curly-haired crazy and the silly-named Russian. Friends for a year and lost when I restarted. So many films and coffees and cheating on tests. Societies full of foreigners and bands with fractured English.

I watched The Black Dahlia again. It makes more sense when people stop asking whatcha watching, who's that guy, why's he doing that? Still not great though but now I have the book to compare it to.

Falling apart not at the seams. Seams can be repaired, tidied up, tucked away. Any seamstress will tell you it's the main fabric you want to avoid tearing. Even if you can save it, it will look ugly. It will look repaired.

I'll just sit here and bleed at you

I woke up early early this morning and shifted through texts I couldn't be bothered reading last night. I always like waking up to something to read. Although probably not great to start the day beating yourself up over the fact that someone is using an extended metaphor of addiction in an attempt to see you again. I'm better than heroin, guys! Fuck I guess I just can't help being so goshdarn amazing, now can I.

Anyway I woke up early early and decided to publish stories in my head. Plan out interviews and signings and reading and most importantly the dedications. Spend advances so far in advance you won't even have to think when you get the cheque. This destroyed an hour. Then I got up and sighed at my fringe for several minutes. I went back to bed with a pen but only doodled screaming attacks on my own personality.

Oh fuck what did they do to Sharleen Spiteri?

I'm poring over maps instead, calculating costs and packing bags full of books. I'm sitting in the red Mustang my uncle owned when he was my age, cheaper than an airplane because other people's memories don't cost me a thing. There's printouts and annotations and scraps of plans of ideas. Go here and here and here. Part of me was resigned to the fact that I wasn't going to get it out, thinks there's no point I'm never going to get there, never going to do anything. But fuck it, I have to try. So there's guidebooks and maps and printouts and my tights have a line trailing up the back of my legs because you have to wear a skirt to write this. Do my hair even though there's nobody to do it for. I'm doing it for my notebook, impressing my own characters, and I'm thinking ahead of advances and long trips and walks round buildings I love. I'm thinking dedications and piles of paper with a finished quality to them. My dad wrote two books, one he was commissioned to do so it doesn't count as much I guess. Still two books means my name is in two dedications. My mum told me the other day that some college course used his first as a textbook for a while which meant a bunch of students read my name.

This is what I did to pass the time before I made it down the stairs.

You'll remember the guy who said all those big words

My mum picked me up a street away from home. Julie was feeling ill and needed picked up from school. School never changes. Even after all those fancy renovations it went through, it's the same old daft place. Keeping my head down I recognised my English teacher coming out of the office and just prayed she'd keep on going. When I say my English teacher I mean she was the head of the department and I had her for three of the five years I studied English. We didn't get on. Not really. In first year she read my first novel and told me what I was doing wrong which was good. In third year she criticised my interpretations of Shakespeare but she praised my essay on The Yellow Wallpaper. In fourth year she criticised my taste in literature until I turned up with Steinbeck and Orwell and that shut her up. It was my fifth year teacher who let me run riot with my ideas even when they were blatantly bullshit. It was my second year teacher who gave me books and told me to read Sylvia Plath because she was a 'mouthy feminist so I was sure to like her'. He was the one who pinned every essay of mine to the wall of the English corridor. I did not pick advanced higher English despite my A in higher because I did not like her. I wasted my time in Spanish and Music and Philosophy instead. I had to deal with her on the last day when the littlest one went to get her card signed and she turned those scary witch eyes to me and said "So Catherine. What is it you're doing?" And I don't lie and tell her English. "Why didn't you pick advanced higher then? It would have been helpful?" Oh you know, other things. Keep my options open.

So woe is me indeed when she suddenly turned and said "Catherine! I didn't recognise you! What is it you're doing?" And I don't lie and tell her History. "Did you not enjoy English?" I lie and say I did very much so but French was iffy. "You should have picked advanced higher. I remember your critical evaluations." Critical Evaluations. I loved that phrase. It was so ridiculously academic for an essay. And then the dreaded "So what will you do after that?" And I can't answer. I can't say I'll write. I can't say I have plans. I can't say I'll backpack across Europe and start a writers commune like Byron. Because come on who doesn't want that? Apart from all the dying. Some scandalous hideaway of the best. We could revel in our genius. I escape after a few more awkward uh huhs and smiles. She says I look different, I've changed and she waves her hand in my facial direction. I don't want to tell her that it's because my hair is scraped back and curly. Or because I was hungover. Or because I hadn't brushed my teeth yet, or changed my jeans that I dried sitting on the sink counter with one foot holding the door shut and the drier blasting my sodden crotch. And I bloody well hope I look different from when I was seventeen!

Then I bumped into my French teacher. The one who tried to get me to thank him for my A. He gave me an odd look but said nothing, thank God. I didn't need to meet every teacher from subjects I ditched in university.

And this was the first thing she chose to animate

I made this ages ago to show Julie how to animate in Photoshop

Jump from the hook

Meet a new person and tell them your name is Kate, Alice, Cassandra, Natasha, Gwen. Tell them you're twenty-four or sixteen. You're studying Chemistry, Sociology, English or Russian. Do your hair a different way, put on make-up for a change, a dress, an outfit. Dance with a man who could be your father and tell him you're younger than you are and see if he falters. Tell them you're foreign, speak with the accent you practiced in all those language classes and buy another beer until you believe it yourself. Change your tastes and preferences just for a moment until someone new comes along and you can switch, jump ship, buy another drink.

It's an extension from when the hairdresser asks if you're doing anything nice after this. My boyfriend's coming up to see me, my girlfriend's back from holiday, I'm going shopping, I'm going to a party, a gig, an orgy, I'm going home. Doesn't matter what I'm doing, tell them something different anyway.

Meet a new person and choose your own adventure. Just remember to backtrack if you decide to like them. Remember what you lied, what you want to keep, what you want to change. It's a complicated business this juggling act.

I found all my old postcards under my bed, and letters and junk. I found my secret box, the one with two lids that are a pain in the ass to open and held so many things. Torn up love letters and rings and necklaces and stones and secrets. I pulled them both open, wrecking the skin on my thumb that's already looking ropey from trying to make things work, and there was nothing inside. I'd taken it all out last time I found it. Disappointment.

I tell the tale of a girl, but I call her a woman

It's a boiling snarl that doesn't suit me, pulling my lip from somewhere around my nose, inclination of my eye. It's the sound of a kitchen knife being pulled from it's drawer. It's the sound of the skin snagging and tearing. It's the pop as my teeth break my skin again and again, disfiguring my smile by distraction. One drunken kick to my face and I can still taste his boot. I laughed into the treads of mud and rubber. With each new lie I build a better model. I read somewhere recently I forget where, I read a lot, too much that's what they told me. I read too much, I think too much. They warned me I'd strain my eyes with all of those words and they were right. I'm formulating a headache right now reading this shit. I read somewhere about memories, how we change whatever it is we're remembering because we are remembering them. We replace the memory each time we think about it. I rewrite my history every day and there's a small part of me that knows I'm lying. That knows that never happened but I shut it up because hey, it could have happened. It should have happened. It's a better fucking story so keep your mouth shut until I say it's safe.

I wrote a goddamn masterpiece, smiling at my ruined face in the reflection of the empty bus. The hints of eye liner smeared by the rain into the grey bags of my eyes. You look tired she said to me every day. First thing before saying hello. You look tired. Fuck you I answered on the last day. Why haven't you died yet? And I met her on a bus with her new man and she laughed and told him how I had hated her. Wasn't it funny? Irrelevant.

I wrote a goddamn masterpiece. It was a plot you wished you'd written. You wished I'd told you before this bus had crashed and I'd been eviscerated so it could have been yours. But I stared hard at the little wisp in the dark window, my raincurled hair scraped back as short as it should be at this time of year and I knew as soon as I pulled the pen out of my left pocket I'd only write about myself. And look it's just as true now and maybe I'll hit publish, I haven't decided yet. Maybe I'll let this rot with all my other drafts. Maybe I'd regret it and maybe you'd be interested but seriously go read something else. I update this constantly to bump the last post away from the top.

t-i-r-e-d spells it.

Woe is me

My mum had some Trinny and Susanna crap on the tv about colours. A whole programme that was basically oh my goodness different colours suit different people! My word, who knew? So the only bit I paid attention to was when they categorised women into shades. Guess what shade I am? None of them because I didn't exist on their system. Just like I don't exist in the system that creates foundation. Oh they covered so many combinations but dark hair, dark eyes and skin like you saw a ghost and then panicked and ran blindly, fell down some stairs, snapped your neck and then came back as a zombie? No. I'm on my own there. How will I know how to dress myself? I must now sit sobbing in mismatched underwear because clearly I am some sort of freak.

I had a dream that I had this notebook I once didn't buy because it was expensive and didn't have many pages. I had forgotten all about it as well and it was beautiful. And I bought it (in my dream) in this fantastic notebookshop that I found in Paris last time I was there. I mean really it was like a stationary shop but it had piles of moleskins in the window and these fantastic little books with fuzzy covers and oh god I just remembered this other shop I found. It had handsewn leather notebooks, incredibly fancy and utterly beautiful and I just stood there while the woman watched me suspiciously because the place was tiny as I just touched every single one and sighed. They were so freaking expensive. This is all because I miss my diary which I filled with utter crap but it was perfect in every way and I can't find a suitable replacement so I had to make do with ikea books. I mean they're good books with good paper and I like writing in them but they only excite me when I put them all in a pile. Goddamn dreams, I was convinced I had that book. I went looking for it this morning and then I remembered I couldn't buy it because I needed bus fare. Goddamn subway breaking down. Oh god they had a gorgeous notebook in the Louvre gift shop as well that was such an odd colour but I can't get too upset about that because I bought a necklace instead and I adore that necklace. Gah buyer's remorse is awful. Let's move on shall we?

I watched The Cell yesterday. And it was stunning and terrible which is what I'd heard anyway. My mum came in near the end and asked questions. After I tried to muddle my way through the plot and it was drawing to a close she suddenly declared that she had seen this film and wandered away. She was more annoyed that I hogged the tv all day as I worked out how to transfer vhs to dvd made more difficult by the fact that The Maltese Falcon and the Big Sleep were on the same video and I had to pay attention and press stop to change dvds half way through. She told me in hushed tones just before she went to bed that she really hated Humphrey Bogart and I assured her that it was ok, I wouldn't make her sit through his films again because I was done. I lied! I have one more. Mwahahahaha.

It's the answer to a question I don't think I was asked

I was thinking the other day and talking mostly to myself because I like the way my voice sounds in a car at night. I'd started thinking a while ago after I read about the death of an Italian actor and how his wife, his lover and his girlfriend had all been there in his last moments. I was thinking how we manage to devote ourselves to the pursuit of a fulfilling relationship whatever that is and we fall in love. I could go all philosophical about that but I won't. I've seen it and I've done it to myself but it's like a constant redraft, rewrite, redo. You meet someone and maybe you do love them but maybe you decide to and you always did. And we're programmed to get over it and move on because you can't stop living just because you fall out of love. But I was thinking louder than I spoke since I spoke about trivial concerns, pitying trivialities. I thought instead about what it feels to have your heart break and live and how it is possible to go through all of that and forget and fall right back in love all over again with somebody new. And I guess I was just thinking about how utterly insane it was.

I have fallen in love two and a half times in my life and had my heart broken once and a quarter. That's how I figure it anyway and every regret that I have has nothing to do with any of that. And I just thought that was funny.

My dad had all the Raymond Chandler books and when I could only find two of them in the box upstairs he immediately went into a tirade against his brother who must have stolen them. In my uncle's house there has always been shelves and shelves of books. My dad has a plan.

"Next time we're there, kid. I'll keep him busy and you check and see if any of them are mine."

So it was wonderful when I opened the cover of one of the pile of books and saw my uncle's name written there. My dad accused my uncle of writing his name on his property because he wouldn't have taken it with him if it hadn't belonged to him. Well ok but I found a single of Bohemian Rhapsody with my uncle's name and HANDS OFF all over it. I pointed out that both my uncle and his wife are English Lit students so of course they'll have tons of books and if he did take them it'd only be because it was a free book. I also pointed out that just because I didn't find them all doesn't mean they're not there what with the box being bloody huge and me being bloody tiny.

And Dad if you are reading which I know you are even if you keep denying it Humphrey Bogart was not in the Long Goodbye. I was right and it is odd that that they would then put him on the cover of the book. So ha! Make me feel like I don't know anything. It was Elliott Gould. Nyeh.

Also did you hear about the penguin who was knighted?

You know how to whistle, don't you?

Last night I had a bad moment, a dizzy spell and what I like to call, in my head where nobody can hear, an existentialist crisis. I lay very still in the dark and tried to calm down but there's been something creeping in my bones for the longest time and it wouldn't let me be. And then my phone went off. Nearly every day at 2 and/or 11pm I receive a text asking what's happening. I have a small collection of these now all from the same boy I have not seen since I was sixteen. If I don't respond and he's drinking then the series of nonsensical pestering begins. If I don't respond and he's sober I get peace and if I respond either way he eventually tries to twist whatever I say into some sort of innuendo to make it easier for him I guess. Must be nice to have such clockwork horniness. Now usually I can brush this off, take it as an uncomfortable compliment and laugh at his persistence but I was having a bad day, bad week, bad time. Still am in fact and will be until Wednesday is done with. Oh wonderful complicated day. For a girl who has never had a problem saying no I've done exactly what I've been so goddamn fucking terrified of doing for over two single years and that's become passive again. This is the reason why I stay so very far away from things that look like relationships and while I'll flirt with most people I rarely give out information that leads to continuing the talk. I would rather be utterly and completely alone than a passive little girlfriend.

At one in the morning I gave up a little. At two in the morning I was furious with myself and tried to sleep but the neighbours were having a conversation outside my window and I kept thinking they were under my couch. At three in the morning I wrote pages and pages of rubbish since I lacked anyone better than myself to talk to. At four I had a dream about a parrot. I didn't see five o'clock. Six o'clock I was merely aware of the ticking of my clock, by seven my dad was awake, by eight so was Julie and I managed to gather my consciousness enough to wish her luck because she's back at school now and that can't be any fun. Nine I gave up and made it down the stairs to be told to get a job for the first time of the day and then I watched To Have and Have Not and stopped freaking out. And all I can think is maybe if these guys knew how I spent my nights they wouldn't want to share them with me.

Also I am wearing red tights right now. You just can't feel like crap with red tights on, they're happiness inducing.

Dedicated Follower of Fashion

Topshop is terrible. I will say it. Whereas before I spent most of my time stocking up on tshirts and the occasional skirt, maybe even a pair of jeans come the sales, now if I can be bothered going in I buy pants, rings and maybe a pair of tights if they are particularly great and there isn't an equivalent in Primark for a fraction of the price. That is how I shop. This is mostly because a lot of their stuff is now hideous, over-the-top rot and if I wanted to look like a crackwhore I'd spread my legs and sniff my own brand of blow thank you. I don't need Miss Moss to tell me what to wear. However, their website informed me of this

Every self-respecting fashion addict knows pins should be dressed in lace tights and thigh-high socks for the new season.

Holy crap! says I. Thigh-high socks, yes please. I was confused then when there were no socks for sale. I didn't let that bother me though and gamely entered the fray with pennies in my pocket and fought my way through the scenesters and isthatamanorawomanican'ttellohgodhenoticedmestaringmaybeishouldjustaskohnoiseeabulgeinthosegirljeans.

They have no thigh-high socks. They have hats and scarves and lots of stuff that would imply they have new season stock in but not what I want. Not the one thing I convinced myself would be the perfect thing to cheer me up today. The bastards.

So I did what any self-respecting half-miserable exhausted girl who will soon realise she has not only put on a tshirt that belongs to her sister but that it is inside out would do. I bought a pair of impractical knickers with money I was saving to buy a dvd. And then when I tried to sort my top out on the train this huge fat guy gave me an odd look and I paused for a moment. Then an old couple sat beside me and I gave up, doomed to be the wrong way round for another twenty minutes.

That was my day apart from lots of mopping and hoovering and sighing and general contemplation over how I manage to wind myself up over silly little things. My new plan for the remainder of the year is to hide from everyone. I will drown myself in blankets if I must leave the house or if I feel obliged to pass the time in the company of the people I do not hate like some sort of vampire. It is the safest option.

I have an excellent idea, let's change the subject

Mixed bag of films yesterday. I finished watching Them. I guess if you have some intention of watching this film don't read anymore because I'm going to spoil it.


Them was actually pretty good as thrillers go and I'm not big on them really. The man gained my respect as he checked the bathtub by stabbing at the curtain with a big stick instead of slowly opening it. THIS IS WHAT EVERYONE SHOULD ALWAYS DO BECAUSE WHO KNOWS WHAT IS IN THERE. Holidays with me are fun. The woman gained my respect by being pretty resourceful and not a total wuss. She pushed one of the guys off a building after all and in the obligatory running through a wooden area she didn't fall down as much as one might expect. There was no annoying music to inform you of scary things. They loomed, you saw, you were a little bit worried. Most importantly the couple seemed genuinely afraid and you don't really know what it is chasing them until quite late on and when you do (they are just kids playing twisted pranks) it's still creepy. More so because they're human, real and children. Best bits were when she had her eye to the hole where the handle of the door used to be and one of them suddenly stabbed a metal rod through, almost blinding her. But it didn't. Hurrah.

I then watched Pat Garret and Billy the Kid. Starring Bob Dylan! And man did they ever want you to notice it was Bob Dylan. Ooh look cowboy stuff INTENSE CLOSE UP OF THIS AS YET UNNAMED AND SO MEANINGLESS CHAP. Highlights were kids swinging in a noose, anything where Billy the Kid was in it being all charming and killing people and Bob Dylan's hat. Low? I didn't need to see an old man being bathed delightedly by half-naked whores. Nor did I need to see him jammed in a bed with them all with such an old man grin. It was creepy.

Then I watched 21 grams which I'd had recorded for months. According to it Hitman is in cinemas soon! It was fantastic but then I'd seen Amores Perros and Babel so I expected it to be so. Charlotte Gainsbourg's voice lulls me to sleep though when she speaks English. Very odd.

This morning I watched 10 minutes of Picnic at Hanging Rock but was so utterly bored I deleted it and watched To Catch a Thief instead because who doesn't like Cary Grant and Grace Kelly being all charming in blinding technicolour? It was pretty unremarkable I guess. Some shots were great and it had its moments but I wouldn't go out of my way to watch it again.

I still have Tell No One, Zodiac and Everything is Illuminated recorded and about six or seven more waiting. I don't know if there's room for them all but I've done ok. I had to delete Stranger Than Fiction for the 3rd time because it was recording at the same time as something else which I didn't even know you could do. Apparently you can but you can't watch tv at the same time which my mum insisted she did so that went away. I can't really be bothered with it. I couldn't be bothered seeing it in the cinema despite being invited and I can't really be bothered watching it now. I'm not sure why.

It's really nothing new

I've got black coffee, an orange and a little hedgehog pill and this is called how I'm going to make it through the day. I can't read which rules out every one of the books cluttering up my couch and I left Kerouac feeling awkward next to a prostitute because I could no longer understand him. The majority of my films cannot be watched because the remaining ones are subtitled or monotone and I can't concentrate. I set myself a task this week, well two tasks actually. Task number one was scavenge around town for cheap dvds and maybe a pair of tights and not come home until I was exhausted and I had walked far enough to see something new. It's the task I usually set myself when I go to uni only with more turning up to lectures maybe. Task number two is chapter three. I printed it out, I pulled out the appropriate notebook and I scoured my floor for a decent pen. But can't read, can't write so I just type nonsense to assure myself I can still communicate. I'm spending most of my day hiding from my phone. In my dreams all it does it ring. In reality it beeps with another distant meaningless hey from someone more bored than I. I'm not sure what I'm waiting for to be honest but I appear to be doing so.

My new passport arrived. I am officially allowed to run away now. It's my insta-cheer up these days, calculating flight costs. I was slightly amused by the fact that if you fly to Paris on the 12th of February you could pay £130 and coming back on the 16th will cost you £180 with everything inbetween getting staggeringly high. But take a trip a week before and you'd pay £60 each way and gain more points by being unexpected and breaking expectations! I didn't even ask to see flights in Feb but there you go, it decided I should. I also laughed as I looked up football dates so I won't be surprised later and there's a game on Valentine's day. Parkhead holds some 60,000 odd (mostly) men. That's a lot of annoyed wives.

Oh bleh I need to hurry up and feel better, I made a goddamn list of things to do this week! I actually wrote it down, neat and concise and organised and bam I got the sniffles and my mum gets flu so I'm left making sure the house doesn't fall down. I hope I never have kids, let me tell you that now. I had the strangest dream last night that I can't even begin to describe. I swear it felt real. I was sat in my old sitting room, squeezed in with a bunch of other people I didn't know and we'd just been to a girl's funeral. I had a bunch of diaries in my hand that had been hers I think and her boyfriend was going to write a book but they kept slipping down the back of the sofa into a shelf of cobwebs and then I had an argument about Catholics, someone insisted I had to go down to buy milk and all I remember is the guy had purple in his hair and facial hair that shifted if you looked at him for too long at a time. Do you ever get that feeling when you've been looking at someone for too long and their face shifts into someone else? Like it's as if you've never really looked at them before because you know them too well and then you suddenly see what they look like and it's completely different from the way you know them? I kept getting that when I talked to him and I woke up annoyed but without a headache so that's something.

In general I think I'm doing quite fine

Cold, cold enamel on my neck and my knees shiver in the window somebody left open and I'm too short to close. I've sat here so long my legs are doll legs, flimsy on their pins and my doll fingers fidget with the clasps and hooks and snapping plastic. Pull it all off me and try and ignore the headache before I realise I have one. It's 6am. Roll up, roll up and see the great pretender. Live another day as Miss Smith who is as cynical as she appears because the world is predictable. She has lived it all before in her head and she ticks off your replies as you give them. Follows the narrative through to the end, making allowances for free will and twists. I want no eyes upon me but one, two, fall for me and talk, talk, debate and discuss and consider my most favourite subject: me. But not the me in my little head. Oh no, too real, too silly. I want lies, rumours, misconceptions and lies because it gives me something to focus on. If I don't look and I don't touch I can soar out of my bones. It's divine and addictive and

I want a throwaway love and a cast-off life. Second-hand dreams and affections reminiscent of those films I love. Quote and remind. Preserve and plagiarise. I'm steady for now but the right word will tumble me down. Too many people living too loud and throw out tendrils to pull me into some new farce and every two years the world revolves and repeats itself. Just a star bright and I want to spit ash on obnoxious faces. I want to disappoint. My finger holds no hope of a ring and my belly just longs to be flat. I have no plans but a mouthful of whisky and a masterpiece under my fingertips. Just give me a little time. I think sometimes of borrowed time and I wonder, eschatological verification. A row of published work and a4 pads of paper I must compete. 13 smiths on the shelf and sometimes I feel so bound by my gender. Two tits and a pussy somehow qualifies me to a standard, somehow makes me fair game. A target to stick a dart in. Claimed, marked, punctured and maybe I need that. Maybe I want that but I can only picture it in the quietest moments and it's always

I'm feeling a little claustrophobic and as the sun shines a little brighter my headache shifts position away from my eyes. Careful now. You are never as great as you believe to be but you are rarely as awful as you suspect. Selling yourself short means your heart won't break and if you're heart won't break, the world can't end and you're not really living then are you?

Strike a pose

I am fascinated by models. Utterly and completely fascinated. I watch all those shitty supermodel shows, mostly because some of those girls are wonderfully catty and horrible human beings but also because damn models are fascinating. I mean they sell themselves, their bodies are a commodity used in order to sell clothes. I remember when I was younger and read awful magazines there was an interview with a girl who was a part-time hand model. If she broke a nail she was out of a job and it was just so insane. I read a model's livejournal pretty religiously. Most of it is pictures of crazy food she has eaten or odd products she finds (she's in hong kong). I found her because her boyfriend beat her up and there were links to it everywhere as she posted her bruises and ranted angrily about how he was an idiot. I was only interested because he was a member of the shins and I knew her name from watching terrible model shows. I always liked her, she talked a lot of nonsense and had a sense of humour. Also she has pope socks and I am always a supporter of girls in socks. See also this girl I found once whose socks I covet. Sometimes I think it is the reason I remain friends with a certain chestily endowed friend of mine, her sock collection is rather pretty.

But yes models. I collect interesting adverts because I don't give a shit about what they're selling, it's just damn interesting photography. And it's that sort of tall, skinny androgynous thing that is so oddly sexual and yet utterly unattractive. I can't explain it. My first best friend, who I idolised and though she lied almost compulsively I believed every word she ever said to me until I hit about fourteen, modeled for a little bit, nothing big but she did minor runway things for young collections. This is really rather irrelevant I just had a flash of her. I remembered she existed. Huh.

LEMMINGS

I was going for French thriller day today. I had three recorded Lemming, Them and Tell No One. Oh my god was Lemming awful. Awful!

Wikipedia tells us that Lemming "deals with themes such as infidelity, suburban alienation, ghostly possession, and what to do when lemmings invade your home." Umm no. It deals with what happens when your boss' angry wife has a tantrum in your house, seduces your husband, blows her brains out in your spare room and then possesses you for a while so that you confuse your husband into thinking lemmings are everywhere! and fuck his boss. This is so your husband will go mad and murder his boss for being a cheating bastard and thus pacify the restless spirit of the wife. Then everything will go back to normal.

I have spoiled this movie for you now but who cares it was awful.

I watched 10 minutes of Tell No One in which a couple got naked and went for a swim and then the wife huffed, went off into the dark and screamed.

I watched twenty minutes of Them in which a mum and her whiny daughter were killed mysteriously in a car at night and a rather attractive teacher teased her writer husband and it was very cute until the music got intense and then my mum (who is now ill, much worse than I yay for sharing) pitifully moaned and I gave up.

SQUEAK.

LEMMINGS HAVE SEIZED CONTROL OF THIS BLOG POST

LEMMINGSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

rien de rien

Mondays are days off as far as unemployment days off can go. It's haircut day and letter sending day also. So happily drugged up on magical hedgehog pills I watched 3 films today. Mostly because I've set so many new films set to record and so many still unwatched. I'm out of room guys! I have at least two days to watch and/or burn onto disk them all!

So I watched Candy with Heath Ledger (who is dead, I forget, I remember, I am saddened, I forget) and the plot was your standard young people are in love and take drugs but I liked it. It had perfect moments and some real sweetness ruined by all the evil drugs. Julie said it was BORING.

Then I watched L'enfant which was similarly sweet but awful. I mean it's a film about a guy who decides to sell his baby, but it made me laugh sometimes just at the childishness of the guy. Julie said it DIDN'T HAVE ENOUGH MUSIC, PFFT

Finally, I watched La Vie En Rose which was very pretty and a little sad but I felt kinda detached. It was nice to listen to and the actress (name forgotten, can't be arsed looking it up) was very good. It was ugly in a good way. Julie said THANK GOD THIS IS DONE and SEE THEY KNOW HOW TO USE MUSIC even though it was of course about a singer.

I made my mum watch Bande a Part a couple of days ago. It was supposed to be a cunning plan in which my dad would watch it, realise he likes Godard and buy films that I could then steal. He won't do it himself because he goes PFFT FRENCH FILMS but he owns La Dolce Vita and there is no way Fellini is less pretentious than Godard. It failed though because he didn't watch it. My mum was very much in awe in Anna Karina's eyes which are gigantic and utterly fantastic. I have to buy me more films. But ahh no time, no time. I have to watch some more fast.

I don't feel safe in this world no more

So I decided a few things in a drugged up haze last night. I have a cold by the way. It comes of the new season starting. And man was that fun. There's the unfurling of the flag because we're awesome but they had Tommy Burns' wife do it following a video montage set to him singing some song that was difficult to hear because the music was tinny over the bad soundsystem. I mean I'm not one to get all sentimental about a man I not only didn't know but never thought about for more than a passing minute when he was alive but it was kinda grim. She was looking rough and the manager was all teary looking and then the game started and it was just so dull. But enough about football.

So I decided a few things, thought some shit out and tried to untangle the ungodly mess I like to call feelings. I came to the conclusion that life is a lot easier without people. I like being alone but I can't be when I meet people because then there's that need and desire to go out and gasp have a good time with them. I can, however, control who I see and all those pesky strangers. Sick and tired of putting up with drunken acquaintances undoing all of my good work warding off desperadoes I told myself I'd save myself some grief (and some francetastic money) by getting home before nightfall. Well let me tell you my week of shunning the night life has brought me more creeps than stepping out the door. So my body acts accordingly. Ok so I can't afford the oh my god leave me alone hair cut so I've become a big mess of unattractiveness instead topped off with the cold. Yay. And I sort of have a date. I don't really do dates to be honest. My very brief and barely worth mentioning relationships since the dire high school era were really just me falling into someone who was there. Dates generally are boring, tiresome affairs in which I feel very much under scrutiny and I act up because of this. Oi, oi, oi I can't stick to my own conclusions when people keep interfering. I'm being my most uncharming as well! I have to fight myself every step of the way as I scream go away, go away, go away.

I read Autofiction a couple of books back. Half way through the main character has an argument with her own vagina for about a page and a half and it was perfect.

I think mostly I'm all bleh because it's a date with a nice boy. I don't know how to deal with nice boys, they like nice things don't they? And nice girls with normal lives and smiles. Maybe I will cancel and find myself a creep to shoot down with harsh words and a sarcastic bat of my eyes. That I know I can do. I think I just accepted because I can't let down a nice guy. I made a bastard cry but I feel awful if I make nice guys do that oh well I thought you'd say no anyway face which I cannot stand to see. Oh it's the burden I must bear being so very wonderful.

Le roi des sorties

Sometimes I think about making films since half the time I think in film anyway. Scenes play out, fade in wash out, music swells, linger the camera on this, then cut to him, wait for her and my fingers have to keep up with the words to explain just what kind of sigh that is. I think about making films a lot. I actually (and this is something I don't often share) but I very nearly picked Film and TV studies at uni which would have enabled me to make my films. I thought about it seriously because I'd looked it up for my boyfriend who wanted to do it and vaguely asked for help in looking it up. I applied to that course for him and I did not apply myself because I didn't want to study beside him even if we had been together. I don't study next to people I am in love with because I study for myself. It's why I end up talking to people in other subjects, faculties and universities as it turned out. He applied to English as well on a whim with Philosophy because he thought he'd be good at that thinking shit which caused me to turn to French if I'm perfectly honest. Couldn't follow me there could you, with your scraping credit pass in standard grade! Ha!

Anyway I dream of making films but the reason I don't do anything about it, and I know enough people that if I wanted to I could do something it, is the sheer number of other people involved. If I write something it can be mine if I don't show anybody. OnceI let somebody else read it I give it away a little but it's still mine. Unless I became a one-girl cast and crew I couldn't make a film in the same way and I cannot act for one thing. Much like I prefer male writers I prefer male directors too. There's something so seductive about film and all those directors that fell in love with their leading ladies and made film after film with them in it I dunno it gets under my skin. In a good way. It's romance captured on camera that you can't achieve in any other way.

Jesus these are the best strawberries ever.

yeah

You know that way when you try really hard to like something because everyone does but ultimately you don't and you always knew you wouldn't but if you said anything you know everyone would like you a little less? And you think am I the only one who sees the problems of liking this? And maybe I'm just not getting it, maybe I'm missing something and I have no right to judge but I still can't bring myself to like it and I feel like a fraud every time it's mentioned. The thing is I remember so clearly when everyone talked about how much they all loved it and I laughed and thought wouldn't it awful if I hated it and I do and it is.

Let's not make any sense today!

I had a dream I was going to an art exhibition and we were so excited because it was supposed to be amazing. The artist, who was a musician I think and that's why we were excited, had pasted his face onto the photo album of a famous model. She was famous because she was always pregnant. That was her thing. So we went to the exhibition you and I and sat awkward on a bench with fingertips touching at the blow up image of a disturbed stalker and we wondered is this art?

And then you said "I'm cheating on you" and I smiled and shrugged and said "ok" because at least you weren't obsessing and I wasn't pregnant. Hurrah.

It's very hard to explain but sometimes I am outside of myself. It's like I am myself but not myself and oh I can't be bothered writing this. I don't even know why I'm here. I have a total of five? five word documents ticking away, little line keeping my space for me while I dawdle. I have three windows open in Safari, one in Firefox and two in msn which I'm only on to prove a point to myself (namely that when her name is in his name he says nothing but if he feels lucky he signs out, deletes her, signs back in and is all Hey there and my god I am amused). I have three drafts in one blog and seven in another (two of which begin with I want to set this straight and three with I can't) I have four notebooks in use around me, 2 finished drafts to consider, one abandoned Frenchie who plagues me with doubt and frustration and one email account that a certain advisor has yet to reply to. I CAN'T REGISTER UNTIL YOU DO AND I WOULD LIKE TO BE A SECOND YEAR FOR ONCE. One more day and I just do my own thing with that uni, only way.

I can't even be bothered eating. I'm going to wait and wait until I get all lightheaded and woozy and then I'll eat junk. Hurrah

le temps de l'amour, c'est long et c'est court, ca dure toujours

The front cover is folded down slightly in the top right corner. Not entirely like The Blind Assassin was but half so the photo and the cover have separated. Other than very vague bashing on the spine it is perfect. A fraction of the price I always buy through the marketplace because although I ideally want to make a living writing my own I don't want to pay for the ones I read. Hypocrite! But even when I wasn't budgeting myself I never liked to spend so much money on books and I could do it so easily. I haven't been reading in a while, I'm reading a new book every two days now it's wonderful. I don't care for this technological age (though I write this on the internet but like I said hypocrite) because there is nothing better than holding a book and finishing somebody's thoughts. Working them into my own. And I have been writing too. I glanced down at my idle document, half wondering if I can make it long enough to send anywhere, if it's 'different' enough this time and I've written 3,000 words. It's too bloody long and I've barely begun. Oh well.

This morning post brings me Kerouac. The pages are white and I can't remember if it was new or used. Must have been new but I flick through and I smell tobacco, a cloudlike waft like a new packet tore into and now it's faded into the spine after its release. He has his own introduction in the style of a form or a resume. There's his name, date of birth, education, married: Nah. So I read this but really I have to go dry my hair before it curls. Well maybe just the first paragraph, see what it's like.

HERE DOWN ON DARK EARTH
before we all go to Heaven
VISIONS OF AMERICA
All that hitchhikin
All that railroadin
All that comin back
to America
Via Mexican & Canadian borders . . .

and I'm lost, gone into the page and my hair springs upward. I'll have to sit bored before the mirror now, flatten myself into doll-like acceptability. The funny thing is I bought this book on a recommendation from a character in another book. And I trusted her judgement because I liked her.

Aventure et amour

I've spent all morning watching old french trailers. There is a reason I am in love with Godard and it is because he makes me smile while my head spins trying to keep up. Truffaut (or what I've seen of him since I missed seeing Jules et Jim twice) has the same quality of ridiculous but not quite the same spark. And then you get the comparison between the french trailers and the english equivalents. Like The Bride Wore Black here shows none of the ridiculousness or the downright comedic side of the film and my god watching that reminded me so very much of how Kill Bill it was. Seriously if you're going to rip a film off just admit it. It's not like he hides it any other time. Crazy.

Anyway the Godard ones are perfect. It's pretentious and French and ridiculous and I could watch them forever. Like short films really and I can't afford to buy more foreign films because they're never as cheap as I'd like. Not even in Fopp's French film sale. But I'll see them all eventually. When I'm rich I'll sit in my home cinema and watch old films all day. Parfait.

Pierrot le fou
Vivre sa vie
Alphaville
Breathless
La Chinoise
Detective
Bande à part
and my favourite of the bunch
Masculin, Féminin

I soothed Julie with food

and so I am here for a moment and only because I'm bored and because they're making a live-action Cowboy Bebop film.

The best part of this is the way the article is like here is some film news, LOOK AT GIANT COSPLAYING BREASTS. Well if you insist internet but she does have the face of some sort of adorable rodent.

I had horrible, horrible dreams but they were also hugely boring so fuck it I can't be bothered writing them out. There was a long speech made by some sort of feminist in a ball gown and I decided yes, she's right, no more men in my life ever and then my phone went off (in reality I mean) and it was male and I had a fit of silent half-asleep hysterics. It was just really funny.

Here is a pointless and irrelevant song lyric.

Here is a very long paragraph sans the appropriate number of commas.
It might be about myself or my tiny quirks/flaws. It might also be about a movie or book or something
Maybe it is about Joey Comeau! I wish I was on Livejournal so I could write that in sparkle letters.

This post seems cheery and mundane because it's about how I like typewriters and don't like spiders and oh little sister you do make me laugh.
And yet now it is about how I never get any sleep. Damn you little sister.

Now it's about a dream I had while not sleeping. Cats were stuffed down somebody's dress and my tall generic male friend was smoking cigarettes in a trenchcoat and there were pickled babies everywhere and it was tragically beautiful in a way that makes no sense.

I am so not gay for the ladies. Why does everyone think I'm a lesbian anyway?
BTW my desktop picture is always a scantily clad girl. Always.

Sex sex sex sex beer beer smoking is so cool sex sex boys la de da dededemandez Jack.

I finished my 28375034968097th novel today but I dropped it in a puddle on the way to uni which incidentally is a drain on my soul because everyone has silly accents and none of the boys like football. I pondered the philosophical nature of this occurrence before I remembered my shitty ex-boyfriend who I am so over no doubt about that but I still wish I had stolen more from him.
Sputnik is a word I now use because it is Russian and I love Russians. Especially my imaginary son Dmitri who I will never have because I'm scared of men and babies in pickle jars.

gggggggggg
little sister get off my keyboard.

The 22nd of July is somehow relevant though I can't actually remember why so better be vague about it.
You know what happened on the 30th of July though? No you don't because you were not paying attention and you never hear me complaining. Except last year I complained a lot then. The end.

The End.

...................

...........'K.

Dear Friends...

Particularly you, Some Guy/Stuart.

This is a matter of the utmost importance.

I have hidden Catherine somewhere nobody will ever find her (except me and probably our mother at some point), and have seized control of this Blog. I will not release the Blog nor Catherine until my demands are met.
What demands, you ask?!

I WANT YOUR CRISIS CORE.

JUST FOR A LITTLE WHILE.
That is ALL.

It's really not much I ask of you.

You have 24 hours to deliver unto me your Reply, or the Blog gets it.
And to prove that I'm serious, here is Catherine's Ear.

...What? I'm holding it up right now. It's not my fault you can't see it. Dummy.

-Julie

In my head there's a city at night

Itunes used to let you watch trailers for free, those were good times. I used to stay up late, watching everything and anything while I idly flirted online with the boyfriend. Automatic cyber relationships, fun, fun, fun. Anyway when they stopped letting you do that and made you pay (pay!) to watch trailers I sort of stopped watching them and then every so often I get the urge. It's a miniature film. So I've been watching some. I'm going to share because I hit a momentary block in the writing due to being hungry and there being no food I can be bothered to eat.

Choke has been made into a film. I don't know if I knew this and forgot or never knew this at all. It has Kelly Macdonald in it and there's something about her I quite like.

The Last Mistress has already been out but I liked the poster and the trailer makes me laugh. There's something about French costume dramas, I've seen a few (not through choice) and everything is so seedy and maybe because I've only seen Asia Argento as some sort of conniving mistress but her face bothers me.

Disney's first Black Princess and the return to 2D animation. I do not like the firefly but I am not the target audience. It's set in New Orleans during the Jazz Age though, there's a lot of potential there. Plus Anika Noni Rose (the name of the actress playing the voice of the princess) is a great name. Makes me smile to say it.

Coen Brothers. It made me smile.

Benjamin Button directed by Fincher and based on Fitzgerald.

and

this just seemed odd.

Mostly it just gives me something to click later when I get bored and feel like watching some more trailers.